#he just started giving us so much stuff that my brain stopped functioning

[kingkat12]

omg I love your fics so so so much and I think you would absolutely nail a fanfic where roman is teaching reader how to smoke? or something like that 😭 like it being really intimate and stuff ughh idk but roman smoking just makes me go absolutely feral

Roman..... teaching reader.... how to smoke....?

do you.... want to give me..... a heart attack......?

THIS WAS SO DAMN HOT IT MADE MY BREATH HITCH WHEN I READ THIS, you BET i want to write this!!! you know me, i love writing reader having her first time doing anything at all lol, this was PERFEEEECT!! hope i've done your request justice, thank you so much for this one!!<3333

nymphomaniac (roman godfrey x reader)

WARNINGS: 18+, smoking, mentions of sex, angst, flirting deluxe, Roman's mouth is FOUL

summary: not all lessons are good for you-- especially the ones taught by the notorious Roman Godfrey, who you also happen to have a history with

word count: 2,425

a/n: and this is NO WAY an encouragement to smoke, i don't smoke myself so... heh. read at your own risk i suppose, and be critical of what you read on the internet PLEASE!! mwah

How to smoke – a thorough guide by Roman Godfrey. That was a book I wouldn’t buy in a million years; why give a millionaire more money?

Thankfully, I didn't have to pay anything to get a free trial from the author of said imaginary book.

Roman sat next to me on the porch leading up to the house of the party we were at, having asked me to follow him outside to escape all the noise. I wouldn’t have gone with him, had I not started to get a headache from what I could frankly only call ear-rape. “It’s too fucking loud in there,” I muttered, shifting on the uncomfortable step. “There’s a reason I don’t go to these things very often.”

Roman shrugged, patting down the pockets of his jacket. “It’s not usually this bad when someone else hosts. But I heard this guy is notorious for being legally deaf, so that might explain it,”

“I wouldn’t be shocked if he did that to himself,”

With a laugh, Roman pulled out an orange-hued box of cigarettes, shaking his head. “It’s too bad you don’t attend parties that often. I never see you anymore, y’know? Just bring some earplugs if you’re so bothered by the damn noise,” 

Oh. My heart jumped with a jolt of pain. I cleared my throat; “Of course you don’t see me anymore, Roman… We broke up two months ago,” 

Despite seeing it coming from miles away, it had been the hardest breakup of my life. I knew whom I had gotten into a relationship with, knew exactly what kind of a guy Roman was, so I had been emotionally prepared for it when it all fell apart. The relationship had been more of a whirlwind thing, a lust thing, which had left me with a very bad case of being-walked-in-on PTSD. That one time Roman decided he wanted to go down on me at school, only for my math teacher to walk in on us in the classroom, was a memory I was sure I would never forget. Sadly. 

However, the bliss of being sexually compatible couldn’t carry the relationship forever, and I was aware of that long before he was. Around the time we hit the one-month milestone, I could see in his gorgeous green eyes that he was tired. Roman needed to be free to function, free to fuck any girl that walked by, and free to disappear for hours and come back whenever it pleased him. 

And what did I need? I wasn’t so sure anymore. 

If I were to use my brain and ponder that question once more, I would conclude that I needed to stop sitting next to my hot ex-boyfriend who was now lighting one of his classic cigarettes. Roman knew I didn’t approve, knew how many times I had told him it was cancer on a stick—still, I settled for the fact that he wasn’t scared of death. Actually, he probably wasn’t scared of anything other than real commitment. 

With a sigh, Roman nodded to himself. “I’m aware, but I’m still allowed to miss the sight of you,” He turned to me, his strikingly green gaze piercing mine— I held my breath. This was getting intense. Nonetheless, the next thing that rolled out of his mouth caught me off guard; “Do you have a lighter?” 

… What? “Roman, you know I don’t smoke,”

He shrugged, the corners of his mouth tugging into a smirk. “Worth a shot. I had hopes that you’d at least managed to become an arsonist in our time apart, maybe then you’d carry a lighter around with you,” Like this, faced with his heartbreakingly beautiful smile beneath the hues of the moonlight, I was reminded of the first thought I ever had when I met him; he was so… cool. Roman always looked so damn cool. I loved the way it made my heart flutter— the feeling of being with the coolest guy at school was still the most thrilling feeling of all. I felt cool, knowing he wanted to sit next to me instead of being inside the loudest party of the year hunting down his next lay. 

It was impossible not to smile back. “Don’t be so disappointed. At least I’m still a cannibal,”

Humored, Roman chuckled; “Glad to hear it,”

“And you’re still a nymphomaniac,”

That seemed to strike a nerve— Roman let out an offended huff, now patting down the pockets of his jeans. “Forget it. I never go anywhere without my lighter, anyway,” he mumbled.

Oh no. “I didn’t mean it as an insult! We were��joking, Roman. You’ve never been the type to hide that you like… sex—” 

“Don’t fucking talk to me about sex right now, I’m too tipsy,” Roman’s words were harsh, snappy. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, now fishing out his usual red lighter; I hadn’t seen that one in a while. “No sex-talk. None.”

“Fine, Jesus!—”

“Thanks to you, I now have to smoke away the taste of you. Thank you,” he grumbled, a slight twitch appearing beneath his left eye as he brought the cigarette to his plush lips— oh, how I missed those. “Your perfume isn’t helping, either. So don’t talk about sex, because then I’ll start thinking about sex with you, along with how you taste after I’ve been going down on you for about ten minutes, squirming, whining, and then I start thinking of how much I miss it. So could you just—just shut up for a minute, okay?”

I stared at Roman in disbelief, my lips parting as my jaw threatened to hit the floor. He must’ve had a few beers too many to be talking so openly about… anything. I would go off on him about his use of words, telling me to shut up, but I was too stunned to think properly. With my mind still buzzing, I scooted closer to Roman on the cold steps of the porch, daring to lean my head down on his shoulder like I used to do when we were together. “You’ve only proved my point,” I breathed, closing my eyes. “Nympho.”

I knew him too well— I knew Roman would appreciate casual physical contact. He didn’t have enough of that in his life, anyway. Chuckling, amused, he lit his cigarette, inhaling with a quiet moan— something told me he had been waiting for a hit for some time. And just as I opened my mouth, ready to start my usual smoking-is-bad lecture, Roman cut me to it; “Don’t start talking about cancer now, either,”

“It is a cancer stick,”

“I don’t care,”

“You should!”

“But I don’t,” With a sigh, Roman exhaled, watching the smoke evaporate into the warm summer air. He leaned his head on top of mine, and I couldn’t help but think how the smell of the cigarette clashed with the comforting smell of his shampoo. It ruined everything. 

This conversation was one we’d had tens of times, and I wasn’t too keen on repeating it. “Roman…” I reached for the cigarette he lazily held between his fingers, feeling the softness of his hand against mine. “Maybe you don’t care, but I do. You need to take care of yourself.” I didn’t need to look at Roman to know his brows were drawn together as I took the cigarette out of his hand, holding it away from him. 

He sighed again, slower this time; “If you’d ever smoked, you’d see the appeal,”

“Yeah?” It was hard not to roll my eyes— “The appeal of cancer?”

With a low laugh, Roman turned his head, kissing the top of my head out of habit. Weirdly enough, it felt platonic for the first time ever, yet it didn’t fail to evoke a hard thump in my chest. It felt like I was being electrocuted from the inside, and my eyes sprung open—I was happy he couldn’t see that. “Not cancer, don’t be stupid,” he huffed. “Just use that pretty little brain of yours, I know it’s in there somewhere,”

If only he knew my brain was currently working overtime. “I’ll never see the appeal of inhaling crap that ruins your lungs. If anything, you’re the stupid one,”

Roman rolled his eyes, gently giving my head a nudge with the shoulder I was leaning on, motioning for me to sit up. “Let me show you, just once. If you don’t like it, you’re allowed to call me a nicotine-addicted nymphomaniac until the last day of high school,”

“And the day after. An extension for your favorite ex,”

“Nope. The day of graduation, and that’s it,”

I turned to look at the blindingly pretty smile on Roman’s face— how was it possible not to fall for this guy? He was gorgeous. “Fine,” I mumbled, knowing I would call him that no matter what behind his back until the day he died. “So how the fuck do I do this?”

Something in Roman’s green, green, eyes shifted. Maybe he was wondering why he had ever let me go in the first place— maybe he was thinking about the word to describe the color of my hair as it mixed with the grays of the moonlight? He cleared his throat, turning his body towards me as I mirrored him; “The first step is easy,” he said, reaching forward to place his hand behind mine, bringing the cigarette to my lips. 

My skin burned. Fucking burned, with every touch. 

Roman’s eyes were already big, which is why I was surprised to see they could get even bigger when he gazed down at my lips. “Open up,” he breathed, absentminded. 

Now, I could be sure he wasn’t thinking about the color of my hair. Maybe he was back to reminiscing about the taste of me? Or other nasty nympho things, as per usual.

I placed the cigarette between my lips, but Roman let out a short, alarmed sound that nearly made me yelp. “Now comes the trick,” he urged, leaning closer— I was unsure whether he was aware he was inching towards my face or not. The closer he got, the easier it was to focus on the single strand of his dark hair that lay over his forehead, straying from his stylings. It was so damn attractive— I had to hold myself back from smiling, now that I remembered the one time I caught him pulling it out of his gelled updo to lay it there on purpose. Cutie.

“The trick?” I echoed, realizing he had frozen to his spot just staring at my lips. I pulled the cigarette away from my mouth; Roman hadn’t said anything for about five seconds. This was bad. This was dangerous. It made me want to jump him and let him fuck me right here on the porch. 

“Uh—” Roman cleared his throat, letting out a breathy chuckle as he shook his head. “Sorry. The trick, right…”

God, I was two seconds away from bursting into flames like a phoenix. Was I still breathing?

“For your first time, you should— because this is your first time, right?”

“Yes!”

“You sure?”

“Roman!”

“Alright, alright!” Roman laughed, biting his lip as he tilted his head just a little. Had the cigarette not forced a space between us, I would’ve started wondering when he would kiss me. “The trick is to not inhale too much smoke for your first time. I don’t want you to cough up your left lung on my new shirt. And hold the smoke in your mouth for a moment, let it cool down, and only inhale it when you’ve taken the cig out of your mouth.”

If Roman one day actually did decide to write a smoking-guide, I could at least be sure the content would be explained simply and concisely. “Seems easy enough,” I mumbled, watching Roman’s pupils widen as I placed the cigarette back between my lips and sucked in a small amount of smoke into my mouth.

It felt like I was getting a mild burn on my tongue— it wasn’t pleasant. For a second, I got scared my eyes would pop from the shock, and I closed them to ensure the blood at least wouldn’t splatter anywhere if I happened to be so unlucky. But when the burning subsided, I finally dared to inhale.

My eyes sprung open, meeting the fascination in Roman’s green gaze as my previous headache caused by the loud music disappeared. My brain suddenly felt like it was buzzing with pleasure and energy. Before I knew it, I was half giggling against Roman’s mouth, letting my cigarette-clad hand fall by my side. “Wow,” I breathed, in awe of the satisfying whirring in my head. 

Roman looked like he was two seconds away from cooing at me, right in my face; “There you go, good girl,” he purred. “Do you get it now?”

God, I hated myself. Still, what I hated more, was that my hot ex-boyfriend was blatantly right. “I think I do,” 

Roman hummed, smirking as he reached for the cigarette in my hand, smoothly brushing his fingers across my skin on his way down. With a content sigh, he looked into my dazed eyes as he pressed his free fingers over the pulse of my wrist— “I still make your heart jump,” he breathed, leaning in so close I could feel the hotness of his breath against my cheek.

I swallowed. “You always will. It doesn’t mean anything,” My eyes flickered back and forth between Roman’s green eyes and his plush, pink lips despite knowing I shouldn’t. 

“It doesn’t?” he echoed, visibly amused as he raised his brows. 

“… Nope,”

Roman hummed, nudging the tip of my nose with his just as he always did—was this maybe just a habit, or was he going to…? The atmosphere was so thick, I could reach out and touch it. My breath had long caught in my chest, but Roman’s next words only made it worse; “Let’s talk about sex again,” he whispered against my lips, his lashes hanging heavy over his eyes.

“No. This is over. We’re just sharing a cigarette,”

“We could share a bed too,”

“Stop it,” I breathed, hoping he’d spot the desperation in my eyes. “It’s been two months. Aren’t you over this?” Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.

Roman stilled. With the next beat of my pulse against his fingers, his eyes softened with a new realization beneath the moonlight; 

“Over you? Never,”

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I loved reading everyone’s thoughts on the roll announcements, but now I feel like I need to make sure everyone knows that I love the DM at my table. I really enjoy his playstyle and he’s always very concerned with making sure that we’re all having a fun and healthy time. The poor guy works so hard to balance combat (because most of us are ridiculously hard to hit) and then keeps giving us these wild magic items and making it that much harder for himself. But like, the amount of stuff he gives us? It’s very cool of him and I really enjoy playing in this world he’s built in his head.

[cr-noble-writes]

What's something that Alex and Jackson have in common, and something they don't? Please feel free to elaborate in detail. 😁

This is such a great question that made my brain fully cease function for like half an hour after I read it lol. But it gives me the opportunity to talk about (and maybe flesh out a bit) the way Jackson sees his father and Alex sees his mother. So, let’s talk a little about idealizing one’s parent and making decisions relating to finding out whether that parent is really as perfect as one remembers or not.

This is a very long answer, so I am gonna throw down a read more haha.

Let’s start with my favorite emotional constipated disaster man, Jackson Shepard. Jackson absolutely idolizes his father. So much so that a large portion of his life was spent trying to be his father. From a very young age, Jackson wanted to be an N7. Why? Because his dad was part of the earliest cohort of N7s, and like most young kids, he thought his dad was perfect. Mitchell Shepard was certainly not perfect, but we’ll get to that later. Jackson only ever saw the good stuff with his dad. The hero stuff. The great dad stuff. The happy, perfect family stuff. And then Mitchell died before Jackson got old enough to really have the chance to see that his dad was, in fact, just human.

So, rather than going through what most kids go through as they approach/reach adulthood and discovering their parents are just people who are just doing their best, Jackson’s already idealized image of his father became further idealized by his death. This is, of course, A Problem™. Obviously, its not a problem to look up to one’s parents. In fact, one hopes to be the kind of parent their child can look up to. It is, however, Very Bad to have such a perfected image of the person you look up to that you’ve now given yourself something that is quite literally impossible to live up to.

So much of Jackson’s adult life is underscored by the fact that he’ll never be good enough to live up to his dad. Almost every decision he makes is colored by whether his choice is something his dad would approve of. While that doesn’t stop him from making choices that he doesn’t think his dad would have made, it does make those choices weigh heavier on him. The imagined disappointment of a perfect parent hangs like a storm cloud. It takes him a very long time to get out from under that. And while he steps out of his father’s footsteps professionally pretty early in his career, its not until much later that he really takes the first step toward living for himself rather than to try to gain the approval of the Perfect Father that only exists in his mind.

Some ways into the ME3 timeline, Liara uses her Shadow Broker reach to dig up some classified files on Mitchell Shepard. Jackson takes them, but after some thought he decides not to look at them. There’s a couple of reasons for this, because Jackson is a complex, contradictory little fuck who can’t have a simple motivation to save my god damn life. First, I think with the war, everything that’s happened with Coats, and the ways his friendships with Kaidan and Ashley have affected him, Jackson is finally starting to reach a point where he gets what’s actually important. Second, there’s a part of him that’s equally terrified that reading those files will confirm that his dad was every bit as perfect as Jackson thought or that they won’t. But I think this is really when Jackson finally starts to separate his own goals and motivations from the idealized image of his father.

Personally, I think some of the info in those files would actually be kind of comforting for Jackson. Because I think on some level, it would actually be good for him to know that the person he has always thought of as being the best person he knows also did some pretty fucked up stuff in the line of duty. Even that is complicated tbf. Ultimately I do think its a good thing that he decides he doesn’t need to know.

Now, let’s talk about Alex. Alex’s situation is a little different, obviously, but he has absolutely idealized the fuck out of his mother. In a way that really affects his worldview. There are good reasons for this, of course, but ultimately I think that just like Jackson, Alex just… never got to the point of realizing his mom is just a person doing their best. And, I actually think because of the nature of his idealization of his mother, it’s actually far more emotionally devastating for him than Jackson’s idealization of his dad.

So, it starts with Alex landing himself on the streets of Blackdamp as a kid, and the fact that Ishara quite literally saved his life. He was literally suffocating because of an atmospheric disturbance when she found him. Not only did she save Alex’s life, she then took him into her home and allowed him to make it his. A kid who was not only from a different planet, but of a different species. A street rat who had never had a family or a real home, from a species that had only barely entered the sphere of galactic society. She knew nothing about him (or the care and feeding of a human child, really) but she took him in and raised him along with her biological children like Alex had always been hers. Based on that alone, she was an angel so far as Alex is concerned.

Add to that the fact that he knows next to nothing about her life before she had children, and the fact that what he saw from the time he met her was a strong, kind, incredibly intelligent person who was constantly trying to better herself and the world around her? Ishara Atruzea can do no wrong, and could never have done wrong. Of course, Alex’s own sense of right and wrong doesn’t necessarily line up with traditional human values, but that’s a separate thing lol.

The interesting thing, and the thing that makes his idealized version of Ishara so devastating for him, is the fact that while Alex definitely interacted with asari society in a broader sense, Ishara was his first and primary impression of the asari. Consequently, a lot of his idealization extends to the entire species. Not to the same degree, of course. He is well aware that individual asari are just as capable of terrible things as individuals of any other species. In the broader sense, however, he does carry an unconscious bias in favor of asari. He does believe that asari are “better”. That they are above many of the moral and societal failings of other species.

So when he starts finding out that they kind of suck in a lot of really big ways, actually, its devastating for him. Not because it changes his view of his mother in any way, but because it changes his entire worldview. The breaking point for him is the temple on Thessia. Finding out that the asari, who are supposed to be all about cooperation have been hiding/hoarding information that could have prevented the war with the Reapers from getting as bad as it does is deeply painful for Alex, because he truly believed that the asari were above that kind of behavior. But really, I think the paradigm shift starts with Samara.

Alex, being culturally asari, absolutely agrees to kill Morinth. He unquestionably believes that is the only way to deal with an Ardat-Yakshi outside of a monastery. But in the ME3 timeline, when everything goes down at the monastery, and Samara would rather take her own life than kill another of her own children… I think that’s a big moment of “hey maybe the asari aren’t morally superior” for Alex. I think that’s the first time that it really clicks for him that societally, there are actually some pretty serious problems with how the asari do things. And then it just kind of rolls downhill from there.

As far as things they don’t have in common? The list is literally endless haha. The big one, I think, is their approach to people and relationships.

Jackson actively avoids attachment. If asked, he’d probably just say relationships aren’t his thing (this includes platonic relationships; he also avoids close friendships). Truthfully its a combination of a couple of things. He has some pretty severe emotional trauma around relationships. Between the way things went down with his mother after his dad died, and the first time he really loved someone romantically (or at least really thought he did. Its complicated), its largely a defense mechanism in the sense that if he doesn’t let anyone get close to him, no one can hurt him. There’s also the fact that emotional attachment is something he sees as a weakness exploitable by third parties, and he can’t have that either. The few friends Jackson has are accidental, at least on his part. They just manage to worm their way under his skin without him noticing until it's too late lol.

Alex is very aloof and closed off with people he doesn’t know because of experiences he’s had re: being biotic and also experiencing xenophobia because of his background. He doesn’t, however, avoid attachment. All it takes to acquire Alex’s friendship is kindness, really. There are different levels to that friendship, of course. For example, Alex absolutely counts Lee Riley among his friends, and they had a non-romantic sexual relationship for the year they spent training under Anderson, but he never told her about his family. Things with the Normandy crew are a little bit different because someone else told the galaxy about his family, so that immediately became kind of a non-issue, but I like to think that even if it hadn’t come out, Alex would have told Kaidan and Ashley on his own because they definitely unlocked Friendship Prime. There’s also the fact that once he decides someone is His Person, he’s pretty much all in. You’re family now. Stuck with him in one way or another forever and ever, amen. And it happens fast.

Thank you so much for asking this question! I don’t think I’ve ever had an answer for an ask that was this long before haha

[twisted-wonderland-shenanigans]

Hello! I've been kinda stalling sending this for absolutely no reason, but I'm gonna do it today because it's going to rot in my brain if I don't. Actually, maybe you've done this ask before? Idk, my brain is all scrambled up rn but I'm gonna ask this anyway cause why not

What would happen if Yuu got their period in the Kaiju!AU? How would the Kaiju react?

I can imagine Grim and Crowley freaking out, trying to figure out what's wrong with Yuu. And all the while, Yuu's like, "What are you guys doing? Hey, stop bombarding me! Personal space! What- why are you guys sniffing me!?" And since Yuu doesn't understand what they're saying, they can't answer them on why they smell like blood. Or it the scenario could work with any other of the Kaiju's, too

Wait, how would Yuu even get menstrual products anyway? Do they get them from Sam?? How would they even get those type of products from Sam??? Maybe he get some of them from that wreck of a lab from the beginning somehow? Idk, but I thought it'd be a fun idea

Yeah, this is all I have rn since my brain is cranked all the way up on slow mode today. I hope you have a good day and goodbye! (Oh, and this can be a gender neutral thing with Yuu just being AFAB)

WARNING: Menstrual cycle discussion under read more! Will be using they/them pronouns since gender neutral/AFAB was requested.

Oh goodness, being in the Kaiju AU is going to be a little more difficult for Yuu whether they’re female or AFAB. 😂 Between staying in Crewel’s den or at Crowley’s nest, it’s tricky to get the supplies that they need or communicate to the Kaiju that this stuff they’ve piled up is necessary. Given that Grim does understand what Yuu is saying though, he is able to help at least get that point across…when it suits him anyway (if Yuu makes even more of a fuss than usual, he’ll translate for the others).

I’ll go ahead and explain that—at first—Yuu had to get a bit creative with their monthly cycle once it actually hit. I’d imagine that their body might temporarily shut down that function due to the stress of their new environment, being surrounded by giant monsters that could literally level mountains with a swipe, and the near constant sense of impending doom—even if they’re safe with the guardian trio. This is good for Yuu as it gives them time to finally venture out of the den with Grim to explore the other facilities as it would take a while before they can get back to the original lab.

Luckily for Yuu, the closest facility—although abandoned—was still in good condition and had most of the supplies that they’ll need. In fact, this is where they found the music player that Grim thought was a chew toy! So imagine the sheer excitement and relief Yuu would have the moment they found not one, not two, but a whole crate full of pads, tampons, period cups, and even extra unopened packages of underwear!

You might be wondering why there was so much. Well, because there are female researchers on the teams and the island is not exactly in the most convenient of places, which means that getting supply drops are far and few. Especially when you have creatures that aren’t the Kaiju who can and will attempt to attack any vehicle that comes near the island. I’ll get a bit more detail on the island’s setup and whatnot, but that’s a bit of context on how Yuu is essentially set when it comes to non-perishable items that could be used for a comfortable existence on the island of behemoths!

Sam may have found a few crates of other supplies that had been washed up, but it’s not like he knows what they’re used for unless he observed the humans using the tools out in the field. Even so, Sam will know when Yuu needs something and will make sure to have them available on his next visit. How else did he know to bring a bed when Yuu wanted something comfortable to sleep on?

Now, as for how the Kaiju would react when Yuu finally starts their cycle. If you were expecting Crowley to be freaking out over Yuu’s health like he did in the Twisted Monsterland AU, you’d be mistaken. He does get flustered, but more like a “my tiny human is too young to mate!!!” sort of way while Crewel just sighs at his theatrics. They would be concerned to notice if Yuu’s cycle causes them a lot of pain and discomfort, but luckily the facilities have plenty of painkillers and antibiotics that are available—all that’s required is MIRA to access the appropriate amount needed to get Yuu through their current cycle!

Surprisingly, Grim becomes more protective over Yuu whenever they’re around the other Kaiju. Whenever he notices that they’re uncomfortable (whether they just took painkillers or they’re exhausted or some other feeling they get during this time), he will pick them up or curl around them to purr up a storm and hiss at whoever comes near too fast.

He’s swatted at the first years more than once. 😆

The other Kaiju boys would be confused as to what’s happening. Sure, they know about cycles on an instinctive level (and they understand what it means), they’re just more confused as to the frequency. Do humans not have specific mating seasons? Eventually it does get to the point where they know to be less rowdy when it’s that time of the month, either bringing Yuu their favorite treats or snacks that they managed to get (and once it became clear that one particular fruit tasted exactly like chocolate pudding to Yuu, it became a staple) or taking naps with them. Yuu is going to be one very comfortable human once they figure out a good rhythm to manage things!

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but there's more than one way to survive in the wild, and with MIRA at Yuu's side, their chances of survival were better than they were before! UvU Also fun fact, there really is a fruit that tastes like chocolate pudding! 0v0

[scenetocause]

Would love a director's cut of tired of looking for answers. It's my favorite ever

like a lot of emptyhalf productions this started with nothing but the thought "max should have a pussy for reasons" and then just went from there. i don't really understand my own writing process because i don't think there's much higher function happening during it, like my brain just knows what it's supposed to be doing somewhere and i sort of have to not distract it. eyes forward or whatever.

the original fic was just like. if max had a pussy lando would be obsessed with it. that's it that's the plot. then for whatever reason maximilian bradley fewtrell was posting stuff that implied he was pregnant and it was lando's or something, the usual sort of tuesday afternoon business with them lot and i was just about to invent an a/b/o mando when i was like wait hang on i have has-a-pussy max already.

which was why max got pregnant. well nah, that's because lando loves coming in him like four times a fucking day, absolute nightmare with the laundry. like bob doesn't make enough of it anyway, with all his rank socks and that. annoying thing is max kind of loves it, lando wanting to shag him all the time, running the stupid washing machine, knowing lando's knocked him up.

bob's less weird about it than max worried he might be. until max starts showing a bit and then he turns so overprotective, can't keep his hands off max's stomach like he thinks his big, stupid mitts will shield the baby or something stupid. like max doesn't love it, the way lando wants to take care of them both.

max does not enjoy the birth. it's pretty quick, in the end, if you don't count a day and a half of contractions that aren't quite strong enough to get sent to the princess grace. bob's there, holding his hand and his shoulders and putting a big hand, protective, over max's pussy when he's getting aggy about the number of people who keep prodding him there and saying things he doesn't want to think about like dilation.

thing is, he forgets the whole thing once they put kit on his chest. once he's got a newborn baby smelling all soft and wet and alive and lando's crying because of course he is but max is just grinning because this is the best thing he's ever done. fucking hell, how did he do this? absolutely mental. just made a brand new human, innit and now they're parents.

he's a bit reluctant to let kit go, when it's time for the other dad to get some skin to skin. but then seeing lando holding their baby, sitting next to max on the hospital bed, makes max want him to fuck another one in right there and then.

they bring the baby to races and there's kind of polite confusion about the whole thing. max doesn't care to explain it, people shouldn't need it spelled out to them that when two geezers love each other very much they can end up with a baby, should they? use their fucking brains.

lando slowly starts referring to max as his partner. posts billions of photos of their kids, even though it gives max a bit of the heebs about whether they're exposing them to the media and that sort of rubbish. but he's not going to tell lando to stop, not when he misses them so much when he's away. he takes the youngest up on the podium, once and max is terrified the donkey's going to fucking drop a baby like he does trophies or something but the pictures are properly adorable.

kit's taller than max by the time lando retires, it's her turn for a world championship that year anyway, in OKJ. lando wants to be able to watch her race, do what his dad did for him, not be away on his own stuff all the time. it's good, max reckons, that he's like this. wants to look after max and the kids, still fuck three times a day even if max made lando get the snip because they don't need a fourth baby.

that last night in abu dhabi they get all the kids in the bed, even though kit's complaining she's too old for this and anthoine's been a bit snuffly, rowan's going through the terrible fours, on top of the twos and threes. hold all their babies together, even if they're not much babies anymore. it's amazing, when you think about it, that they've done all this. never would've expected it back when him and bob were just doing bits at parties and that sort of thing.

[cashandprizes]

Top 5 Redacted Quotes (BA Edition)

My darling @gingerbreadmonsters tagged me so lovingly <3 And I initially was like "oh I don't know what my favorites are" until I decided I realized no one can stop me from doing my favorite moments in BAs that had me keyboard smashing (usually at Lexi) at all hours of the day.

So, without further ado, quotes from Redacted BAs that have made me so furiously feral I black them out of my memory to function.

Tagging some of my discord buddies <3 no pressure!!! @calicostorms @bratty-telepath @bicyclepainting @horrorscoupes @angelnoodlesoup @just-call-me-angel

NSFW/NSFT under the cut, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Starting off with my Number 1, which is the shortest but somehow most powerful of all:

Sam BA "You fixin' to bounce on this cock?" Stop. Stop everything. I about DIED. I have text receipts of me texting Lexi furiously screaming about this whole audio BUT THIS LINE? There is no salvation, only damnation and I run to it.

Number 2, a very close race:

David Hot Boi Winter/Proposal BA "Because every thread in my body is screaming for you, to have you. I wanna dig my teeth into your skin. I wanna fuck you into this bed so hard that the frame breaks underneath us, and then fuck you into the floor even harder." LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK. OH MY GOD??? LET ME LIVE??? This audio was made specifically for bitches with their monsterfucker license who love possessive feral primal play (it's me I'm bitches). I had to relisten to this because I completely blacked out listening to it the first time because I was so feral and relistening was... words cannot describe. Help.

Number 3, the audio that birthed my url:

Milo BA illegal that it is the only one "Yeah? You want me to use this mouth of yours? Whose mouth is this? Good. [...] Kiss it first. Just kisses. Yeah, he's happy to see you." Milo Greer WHAT THE FUCK. I was only going to use the "yeah he's happy to see you" because that line is the kind of hilarious deviant shit I like, bUT WHOSE MOUTH IS THIS? Sir. I was minding my black business how could you do me like this?

Number 4, probably one of my all time fave audios

HuxDami Confession BA Can I just... "[Insert SS tier nefarious neck ultra high-quality throat goat noises]" "I'm made of tough stuff too Hux... and I like it rough. I'll tell you if it's too much. [...] Now show me what that body of yours can do, big guy." "Bet." "More." "Oh fuck. Oh god. Alright, you want more? I can give you more baby." This audio is so revolutionary I couldn't pick one quote. As a Damien kinnie who has gotten at least two five star Yelp reviews for my head game, real recognizes real. That was some the rent is due tomorrow vortex neck and like... I can't even describe how much I love this audio. The "bet"? ofaoiefoss. "More" was the moment where I said "oh god is this ME?" Damien Throat Goat Hours <3

Number 5, straight from the boy Lexi used as a WEAPON to drag me into this fandom:

Lasko Hot Boi Winter BA “I’m thinking really, really hard. I’m definitely not just, um, not, not just, a fucking puddle of precum, and very almost actual real cum.” “I’m a good boy. Good boys hold it in. Good boys hold it in.” Lexi knew that if they dangled a subby, flustered nerdy boy in front of my face I would be helpless and goddammit I am. I blacked out and wrote like 2k words of smut continuing the sextember audio just to make him cry. THIS? It was so funny and cute and just so.... sfsofspojfswe hot omg Lasko is just so whiny and whimpery that I become so fucking feral...

Honorable mentions!

Sextember Lasko BA - "I’m not gonna have a brain by the end of this! I’m just gonna be some drooling, crying, humping mess pulling you around like I’m in heat or something. No that’s not hot, that’s cruel! What do you mean that’s what makes it hot?!" Lasko Hot Boi Winter BA - "you're evil, you're so fucking evil, it's okay! It's okay!" Sam BA - "You wanna ride your cow- You little… Get over here. I oughta whoop your ass for that one, you menace."

I think I might do another one of these but JUST for meme quotes because I need to do my url so badly. It's maybe the funniest thing Milo has ever said.

[blade-that-was-broken]

half life & something to remember r my fave aus ✨

AHHHH THANK YOU!!

I LOVE both of them. I’d like to give a series name for Something to Remember but idk at this point. It makes me LAUGH and I love that.

Amnesiac JD and Branch become the most functionally chaotic duo ever. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to write Branch the way I want to very well for this au but I love the concept. Amnesiac JD doesn’t have the pressure or guilt or the other stuff that canon does in his head so it’s like he’s starting fresh. Instead of being a child trying to raise children in the looms of certain death and manage the band, he’s just an adult hiker dude that finds out he has a brother and goes cool I’ll take care of him.

JD cannot and will not escape the big brother instincts. Ever.

But it’s so funny to see how much they deviate from canon cause they are really different. Still survivalist and JD is still funny and ready to try anything. Branch is still prepared and super smart but not nearly as fearful and cautious as canon. They CAN and will do some pretty crazy stuff and are good at it too.

I hope the ideas and brain rot for that come up again soon.

Half Life was like… idk what it was. It started as a tiny snippet. Almost like a blurb of thy beginning part with JD getting a phone call from CPS. And then I started and couldn’t quite stop. There isn’t a ton of rhyme or reason to anything, it’s just kind of been going and stuff and I’m totally okay with that.

The brain rot is real man.

I was a little nervous to do a human au but like whatever. I’m trying to deal with some of my own catastrophic thinking, worry and perfectionism so I’m hoping this helps in the writing aspect kind of getting over that. I really enjoy writing it too.

I figure I’ll probably keep the series to about the first week and after that, maybe just one shots and scenes/like mini arcs of them after that. It’s mostly fluff and it’s safe to spoil that John Dory does get custody of his brothers.

I have PAGES of thoughts of the characters, a couple of ideas etc. like there’s quite a bit of notes on things. I have a soft spot for JD and Delta friendship and since right now John doesn’t have any real associates or friends in canon to bank off of, he got Delta instead so I guess some things are kind of different in that aspect.

And I kind of use my own experiences a little. Not with JD specifically but just little things. A lady at my church is letting a family of 5 live in her house or the fact my dad sold his parents house to a guy for lower than market value cause it was his first house. Big families that encompass around lots of small towns and help each other, accidentally unofficially adopting friends and such. It’s easier to write small towns when that’s all you’ve ever known. And it’s kind of nice.

I’m so much better at taking media’s characters and molding them to what I want in a story, even if it’s wayyyy off canon than I am with my own original character stories (although I have a TON)

And I love doing little things for my own stuff. I’m getting way off topic. This is what happens when I explain stuff. I over explain and over talk LOL

This au has really been a lot about feelings. Right now it’s all in John’s pov I guess but other snippets and shots will probably be in others.

If you have any questions about anyone, anything that happens, the characters etc. feel free to ask. I love answering and it sometimes gives me new ideas!

[itsbenedict]

Just finished this game, which I played because my brain has been fried by work problems and I needed something to chill with, but mainly because @konec0 did the soundtrack and I wanna support what he's doing. Still appreciate you pitching in on Nepetaquest 2011 back in the day, dude!

Cuisineer is an arcadey restaurant manager game, and also an isometric hack-and-slash dungeon-crawler roguelike. You delve dungeons to get ingredients, you cook and serve those ingredients in your restaurant, you get money with which to upgrade things and get more ingredients and serve more food. Solid concept!

Does it work? Well... It's very cute, and very polished, but it's held back by some very strange design decisions.

In short... its primary and secondary gameplay loops clearly had a lot of love put into them, but the tertiary loop- the progression systems- are very weirdly balanced to the point of being almost broken.

Bad thing 1

The main problem: everything costs wood and stone. Everything costs wood and stone, and costs more wood and stone the further you upgrade things. But you don't get more wood and stone the further you get in the game, at least once your inventory space maxes out. Wood and stone give way to Magic Wood and Super-Stone of various sorts, which are required for stronger upgrades, but you still need big piles of the basic stuff and can't substitute the advanced stuff, and it's the limiting factor on every single purchase in the game except health potions and rugs for some reason. Combine that with sharply limited inventory space, and money from running the restaurant very swiftly stops mattering compared to how many times you've farmed the starting level for crafting materials. It functionally locks you out of what might be fun systems, like the decoration and furniture stuff- since doing anything cosmetic trades off against progression.

Bad thing 2

Also- in the dungeon-crawler half, there's not much advancement to speak of. You might think these resources could be spent to make you stronger, but... upgrading weapons is expensive and time-consuming and has extremely marginal rewards. Like, the starting weapon does 10 damage, and a fully-upgraded endgame weapon might do 15. The game seems to be trying really hard to avoid being an RPG and letting the player get stronger over time- the various mechanics for upgrading your combat capabilities are just not worth it, and the random weapon drops are mostly identical and do nothing but clutter your inventory.

(It feels like it's trying to limit progression so it can bill itself as a roguelike, even though that's not really what the game is on any meaningful level? Not a choice that really works for it as its own game, imo.)

Bad thing(?) 3

The game's combat is an odd duck. It's... very polished, and very compelling, if you use the one approach that actually works. There's nine weapons, but only a handful are viable with the way combat is designed.

Enemies have very short windows where it's safe to attack them, and are quick to punish you for bad timing or wrong positioning. Reminds me of a soulslike, almost. Healing is sharply limited, so you really need to be careful not to get hit by stuff- and there's so much stuff. Walk into a room, or too close to a room, and everything in it will instantly aggro you, including artillery enemies with long-distance ranged attacks. Problems appear quickly and overwhelmingly, so combat ends up being a case of... dodging massive walls of tomato danmaku and miscellaneous enemy projectiles as you charge into rooms full of enemies and hazards, trying to find one safe place to stand for one second while you hit one enemy for chip damage, over and over again until you gradually thin the enemy numbers and win yourself room to breathe. It's very intense and very fun once you get the rhythm...

...but some weapons just plain don't fit into that rhythm. Many enemies need to be consistently stunlocked to deal damage to them safely, and the reloading projectile weapons and slow hard-hitting weapons just can't do that, forcing you to take hits, which you can't afford to do. Narrow-hitbox spear-type weapons fare poorly against crowds of small enemies who can slip past your guard, which are Everywhere. There's a fun kebab weapon that lets you charge and dash around the stage, but levels are claustrophobic and full of hazards that punish you for doing that. As Chiyo Kumasawa foretold: the only thing you can rely on is your trusty mackerel.

There's also a weird and kind of funny tradeoff where... you can't meaningfully upgrade your damage, but you can roll elemental status effects that can give you some multipliers and useful passive AoE damage as you're dashing around trying not to die. But... these huge AoE elemental effects have very wide, obtrusive visuals that hide the enemies on the screen, and you really need to be paying attention to enemy animations so you don't get hit. It's a sort of unintentional tradeoff of defense for strength, which weirdly works.

Bad thing 4

The writing's kinda flat. You've been hoodwinked into taking on your parents' debt and running their restaurant, you have to pay it off- it's established pretty hastily and mainly ignored. The townspeople have very cute designs, but they're all kind of nothingburger characters whose lives revolve around the urgent need for you to deliver them lots of random food items for contrived reasons in exchange for recipes and stuff. Cast kind of comes off like some softcore smut artist's stable of OCs whose personalities were afterthoughts. Doesn't really go anywhere, the localization's pretty stiff, most jokes don't land... doesn't seem like there was a lot of effort put in there.

Good thing 1

I spill way more words nitpicking flaws than I do praising stuff, but I did enjoy this game enough to finish it, and it's not for no reason.

Firstly- the restaurant section. I have no complaints about the restaurant mode! It's polished to a mirror sheen, honestly. I'm given to understand the restaurant sim is a genre, mainly native to phones, and maybe this all works because it's cribbing mechanics from some more successful inspiration I've never heard of, but... it's just very enjoyable, void of potentially annoying cooking mechanics and letting you focus on queuing up dishes, keeping track of orders, and dashing around making sure everything is running smoothly. The balance job is very nice- the difficulty during lunch and dinner rushes is just enough to make you sweat a little as things ramp up, and they last just long enough to get the most out of the pressure without totally overwhelming you. Chef's kiss, no notes.

Good thing 2

konec0's soundtrack is real good! I mostly know him for his electroswing and HS fanmusic, but he can clearly pull off a wide range of styles. It matches the overall sound design really well and it's enjoyable to listen to. Excellent job there!

Good thing 3

The "final dungeon" segment does this very cool and fun thing where it combines the dungeon-crawling combat and the restaurant management into one challenging final exam where you have to survive combat arenas to scrounge up ingredients as you cook them up and serve them, which would maybe get exhausting in core gameplay but works really well as a challenge for the end of the game. Liiiiittle bit too easy in the first two rounds, but it's fine.

Good thing 4

I already mentioned this alongside the nitpicks, but: when the combat works, it works- the feel of it is satisfying, the challenge is well-calibrated, and the animations look great and convey what's happening well.

Good thing 5

Also the character art is very cute. Lot of fun designs there, even if as mentioned the characters they're attached to are pretty flat. The game's just gorgeous in general- the artists knocked it out of the park.

OH WAIT BAD THING 5

The game's cover/key art prominently features a squid that throws ninja stars! But there's no squid that throws ninja stars in the game! How the heck did that happen!!! Give me the ninja squid!!!!!

[tinyinvadr]

Psychoborrower 2 is finally here! I got caught up with work stuff recently, but I’m very excited to get this story started!

Psychoborrower 2

Chapter 1

It’s insane to think about how much can change in just a few days. I’d been training at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp for a little over three years. It felt like I was never gonna reach my ultimate goal of becoming the first borrower Psychonaut.

Then a goofy kid with goggles showed up and everything changed overnight.

I faced (most) of my fears, helped save the campers and counselors, and officially became a Psychonaut!

But most importantly, I finally felt like I found a place in the world where I belonged.

It’s hard enough growing up as a borrower. It’s as lonely as it is stressful. Constantly worrying that each passing day could be your last, and not having a single person you can call a friend.

Tack being psychic on top of that, and you have the added tension with your family, AKA the only people you’re ever going to interact with.

My feelings towards my parents were… complicated, to say the least. I could understand their concerns about me, but man… they could’ve handled it better. They could’ve done worse, but that still didn’t make their reactions to my powers okay.

Anyway, I was very relieved to learn that the PSI community is full of the kindest and most accepting people you will ever meet. Sure, humanity has some bad eggs, but everyone does. And psychics know what it’s like to be cast aside and mistreated. They took no issue with me being a borrower.

In fact, the Psychonauts have been helping the borrower community for a long time. In small, subtle enough ways that we wouldn’t notice, but still much appreciated!

With that in mind, I was really looking forward to going to HQ. My addition to the team was bound to be a real game-changer. I could use my position to let the borrowers of the world know that they’re not alone, and the Psychonauts have our back. Then, who knows? Maybe people like me could actually rest easy for once, knowing that we don’t have to be hidden all the time.

But that would have to wait. We had some unfinished business with Dr. Loboto.

The apparently not as evil as we thought dentist had already let it slip to Raz that he was hired by someone to kidnap Grand Head Zanotto. We managed to locate and catch him after escaping the Rhombus of Ruin, but even after restoring his Moral Compass, he refused to cooperate.

With that in mind, Sasha got to work on a mental construct that we could use to trick him into giving us information. I wasn’t exactly all for this plan. The last thing the guy needed was another betrayal of trust.

But we really didn’t have any other options. It didn’t matter how much he regretted it, Dr. Loboto still kidnapped Truman Zanotto and was withholding information from us.

After Sasha completed the construct, we all projected into Loboto’s mind. I was hesitant to go back in there. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it if we had another run-in with his sorry excuses for parents. But Sasha assured me that we wouldn’t come across anything. This construct was designed to make Loboto believe he was an employee at Psychonauts HQ.

Though, I have to say, the fake HQ was REALLY dull. I get that we couldn’t have it look like the real Motherlobe for security reasons and whatnot, but my suspension of disbelief was having a hard time buying that the coolest spy agency in the world functioned like a boring office job.

Raz and I shared a cubicle, so we at least had each other to kill boredom. That and a Newton’s cradle with little brains instead of little balls.

“I really hope the real HQ is more exciting than this.”

“I’m sure it is, Raz. But hey, at least we get to wear these cool suits!”

Not a moment too soon, Lili stopped by to escort us to the “Morale Corral”, the Psychonauts’ daily staff meeting intended to, you guessed it, boost morale.

We were running a little late, but we managed to make it in time just as Sasha and Milla were presenting the Employee of the Year award.

“And the winner of this year’s award is… Caligosto Loboto!”

Dr. Loboto pushed his way through the crowd, overjoyed.

“I’ve never won anything before! Or been on a vacation! Ah- I don’t have to get on a boat, do I?”

Milla smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder as Sasha handed him a clipboard.

“No, darling. All you need to do is get this form signed by your supervisor.”

“It’s just a formality. All employees must get approval in writing from their boss before taking a vacation.”

Loboto quickly became uneasy at the mention of his boss. He started to back out of the room, but Coach stopped him.

“Hey, Cal, I get it. A tropical vacation all to yourself is a lot. But if you don’t want it, I’ll take it off your hands!”

Loboto shoved him out of the way and ran to the other side of the room.

“No! I won it fair and square! I’m the Employee of the Year!”

Milla stood beside him, walking him towards the hallway.

“Of course you are. Now, go get that form signed by your boss, okay?”

He eyed her suspiciously for a second, but went ahead and walked down the hall with the form. Which meant our plan was finally in motion.

Raz threw on his iconic cap and goggles, and stealthily followed after him while I stood perched on his shoulder. Gotta say, it was good to be back in action.

We trailed him for a bit, but it didn’t take long for him to notice he was being followed. In retaliation, Loboto began to warp the construct, stretching out hallways and shifting gravity itself to get away from us.

I know people are powerful in their own mental world, but something about this seemed off. The amount of control Loboto had over it didn’t align with what I’d previously seen the first time I went into his mind.

He was born a psychic, but his abilities were forcibly removed when his parents sent him for a lobotomy. It didn’t add up that he was able to evade us in such a way.

We met up with Coach, and made our way to a set of doors at the end of the hallway. When we opened the doors, I nearly passed out. We were met with the face of a giant Loboto. And he was actually giant, not just in comparison to me.

Trying to perceive something that impossibly huge makes my head spin, so I quickly shifted to human form just to ease my mind.

Right as I did that, he began hitting the doorway. The room tilted down as we were shaken out into a giant trash can.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just a normal trash can. Maybe a little stinky, but nowhere near as horrifying as what we actually found in there. Growing out of the walls were massive teeth and gums.

“I knew it. I knew this guy had freaky teeth stuff tucked away somewhere in his mental world.”

Raz chuckled. “More like DENTAL world!”

“I hate you.”

We climbed up the teeth and found a door, also made of teeth. It opened like a zipper, and on the other side was a blinding white light. Coach shielded his eyes.

“CLOSE IT, CLOSE IT!”

It was too bright to see what was going on, but I could hear Dr. Loboto’s voice. It sounded like he was talking to a patient. Then, the light was replaced by pitch darkness, and we were sent into another free fall.

We ended up in a warped room of HQ, with more teeth jutting out of the walls, and plenty of Censors ready to stamp us out.

Raz and I punched them into oblivion while Coach found us an exit. As we finished them off, Raz turned to me, staring at me for a minute.

“Uhh… What?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s just… I dunno if this is a good time or not, but could you show me how you do that size-shifting thing? I think it could be useful on future missions if I also know how to do it.”

Huh. Never had to explain it before. I’d been doing it for so long that I didn’t really have to think about it anymore.

“I guess I just… focus on what it looks and feels like to be bigger or smaller. Though, I will say, smaller is easier than bigger. There were a couple times when I was first starting out that I accidentally went even tinier than my default form.”

Raz did just that, and almost in an instant, he zipped down to borrower size. Gotta admit, it kind of stung to see him get it on the first try, but I promised myself I wouldn’t let my jealous tendencies get the better of me anymore.

“Hehe! Look! I’m like you!”

I picked him up and put him in my shoulder, which was a very weird feeling. We then met up with Coach again, who found another dental door.

“Huh? Did you two swap places or something?”

“Hi Coach! I learned a new PSI power!”

“Good work, soldier! Gotta take some time to appreciate the little guys.”

Coach stayed back to patrol the area while we went on ahead. We soon caught up with Sasha at the end of a long and winding conference room. And he was getting repeatedly smacked in the face by a uvula. Though, he was taking it surprisingly well. Even when he’s in pain, he somehow manages to sound indifferent to it.

A few PSI-Blasts were enough to make the uvula shrivel up. Gross. But with that out of the way, we were able to proceed onward with Sasha.

“Ah, I see you’ve learned to alter your astral form, Razputin. Very good. I’m assuming you taught him that, Flint?”

I smirked. “Yeah, I’m kind of the best teacher.”

“Alright then. Let’s keep moving. I suspect the person who hired Loboto is in here somewhere. I highly doubt he would be able to create this mental labyrinth by himself. Whoever the real mastermind is, they knew he would be captured and interrogated, and they left a trap for us here.”

We were then ambushed by a bunch of wind-up teeth toys. Sasha held them off for us while we looked for a way out. I only hoped we could get back to an area that at least somewhat resembled the office construct. This place we’d found ourselves in was overwhelmingly fleshly, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to mask my disgust.

After PSI-Blasting a couple Tooth Fairies, we found what appeared to be an exit, unsettlingly located on the other side of a pair of jaws. Right as we got close, they slammed shut. Sasha caught up to us at that point, and then, water started to pour in between the teeth.

Raz screamed, and I quickly clutched him to my chest as we were washed out. As we fell, I noticed we were being spat out by Dr. Loboto, who was a patient to… Dr. Loboto?

We landed back in the room that we last saw Coach in. But there was no sign of him.

Raz took that opportunity to shift back to his regular size.

“I think I’ve had enough of that for now. Man… I don’t know how you handle being that small all the time, Flint.”

“Eh… I’m just used to it.”

Suddenly, a Regret appeared. I’d never actually seen one before, but I learned about them during my time at camp.

“Hm… so he has Regrets. Perhaps he can be reasoned with.”

“Hehe, it’s kinda cute! Like a little mothy!”

“Flint, remember what we talked about.”

I sighed. “Regrets don’t want hugs, they just want to crush you under the weight of life’s problems.”

Sasha went to look for an exit while Raz and I fought off the Regrets. They’re weaker than Censors, and can be defeated with only a blast or two, but the weights they carry can really do some damage if they manage to drop one on you.

We found a golden door, which was promptly stolen by the Tooth Fairies, so we just blasted them again and made them drop it.

Sasha stayed behind to attempt to regain control over the construct while we continued through the door. On the other side was another heavily distorted hallway. Lili called out to us from the other end, so we rushed to catch up with her.

The building began to shake, and we slid across the floor, flying through a gum tunnel, and nearly missing a pool of water before we crashed in a small room filled with what I can only describe as demotivational posters.

Lili appeared on one of the posters, and suggested we try burning them so that they can’t influence Loboto. We did just that, and found a large hole in the wall behind one of the posters. We went through, and in the next room, we found Loboto himself in a poster.

“Don’t you remember how you restored my moral compass in the Rhombus of Ruin? We’re okay now, right?”

“Dr. Loboto, you need to tell us who hired you. If you have your moral compass back, that means you understand what you did was wrong, right?”

He went silent. I got the sense he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t bring himself to. We continued on, burning the threatening posters, and found what could only be Loboto’s office. There were several portraits of him on the wall, including a large one in the center where we could talk to him again.

There appeared to be an exit behind the frame, so Raz set it on fire. Loboto screamed as he started to burn out of the picture.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Once he was gone, the frame collapsed on top of us. We fell into another black void, though Lili caught us this time with her Telekinesis.

It’s said that when someone has Regrets, they’re bound to have Doubts. Sure enough, Doubts had started to appear.

They’re… less cute than Regrets. Just purple blob monsters. Not moth-like in the slightest.

The best way to deal with Doubts is to burn them, so after setting them on fire, we caught up with Lili again.

She was in the middle of interrogating another Loboto painting. He had become increasingly stubborn, and was starting to deny that he even did anything wrong in the first place. It saddened me to see him revert back like that, especially since I could tell he was only doing it as a defense mechanism. Whoever his boss was, they had him scared of something.

We burned through the painting, and on the other side, a giant Loboto grabbed Raz with his metal claw. I could practically feel the rage emanating from Lili.

“Let him go!”

“Hmm… Okay!”

He threw Raz down, and I jumped after him, levitating down with him.

Milla also had a similar idea, and we both caught up with Raz, who hadn’t thought to try and levitate as he was falling. Can’t blame him too much, though. It’s hard to focus when you’re panicking.

By this point, we were completely outside the confines of the construct. Not a single remnant of the fake HQ was anywhere to be seen. It was all just a toothy nightmare.

Milla went on ahead of us, so we levitated to try and catch up with her. We heard her suddenly scream, and by the time we reached the end of the path, there was no sign of her anywhere. It was then that we realized that Sasha and Lili seemed to have disappeared just like Coach did, which could only mean that everyone else got booted from Loboto’s mind.

Up ahead was a replica of Loboto’s lab back at Thorney Towers. We followed him up that stairs as he rambled to himself. I couldn’t make sense of it. Something about an egg?

In the lab, he looked like he was on the verge of breaking down. He paced the room, desperately trying to remember a certain phrase. Then, a shadowy figure corrected him.

“You put the egg in the basket, and the old egg in the box, and the box in the ocean.”

It was hard to tell who the figure was. Their voice was heavily distorted, and all I could really make out was a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

“And if you tell anyone about me, you’ll have to deal with HER, understand?”

“No! Please! Not her again! Not her!”

Loboto backed away, absolutely mortified. It was so strange to see him like this. Only a few days ago, he was threatening Sheegor, but now that he was on the receiving end, he looked even more terrified than she did.

The shadowy figure glared at him, mercilessly, then turned his attention to the window. A massive pair of purple eyes stared down at us. Raz and I looked closer, and we saw what had him so scared.

Outside the window was a giant woman, standing on the water, bending it to her will. The waves rose up around her, and at her side were two eels, made from the ocean itself. The last things I remember before we were kicked from the mental world was her enraged scream, and what appeared to be hands made of water reaching for us.

Raz had described how the water curse manifests to him in this form. I hadn’t noticed it before, so I assumed it was something only he could see. But I saw it clear as day.

The mission was not only a failure, but it left us with more questions than answers.

[afreakingdork]

...

how do i even start.

Miss Dork, do you realize you make me miserable? how am i supposed to wake up everyday and deal with the fact that i'm deeply in love with a man that doesn't exist.

How am i supposed to cope with the fact I will never hold him on my arms or hear his voice say my name? I will never be able to ask him how his day is and ask wtf he meant when he uses his nerd words.

Having said that

EPIGUOHJG0IPDS´JD´SOMIG{ÑSJOKGBJNDFBUÑOIHSDJKOVDSI{GNJDS´PJDSPIDSNGÓIDSONGDSJNSD{LFL{FKÑASO{ÑJSAFHDSJLGJDSLF{DSFJDSLFNSDOÍJDS´GJDSOGI´DNHGIÓSF{KMLÑMSF{LKDSFNASPFOJFÓSDHFJ

1-SHELLDON SHELLDON SHELLDON SHELLDON SHELLDON

HE IS SO CUTE, I WANNA PUT HIM IN MY POCKET I WANNA SLEEP WHILE HEARING HIS DRONE FANS

HE DESERVES THE WORLD THE INTERACTIONS BEETWEEN THE 3 OF THEM WERE SO AMUSING

2. AH YES, READER GIVING DONNIE A TIME OUT IT'S WHAT I NEEDED TO INCREASE MY LIFE EXPECTANCY

3. THAT FUCKING BITCH HID HIS IMPLANTS!!!!! MAKES SO MUCH MUCH SENSE OMG!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO HUG HIM SO BADLY (had to look up for that on the google, i've been reading the chapter with the browser and traductor open as always lmao)

4. POSSESIVE DONNIE YES I LIVE FOR THIS

5. Reader: "didn't u said u named urself?"

me: HELL YEAH READER ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS I NEED TO KNOW SO BAD

donnie: *ptsd*

me: MISS DORK WHY DO U DO THIS TO ME

(splinter splinter splinter splinter??????????????? i can smell daddy issues, I KNOW THAT SMELL SO WELL)

6. tbh donnie is so lucky to have reader. can a person fall in love with the reader? well, seem like it's possible, look at me. Theyre so sweet.

7. "If all of this hasn't finally cemented your decision otherwise..." YOU WISHED BITCH UR NEVER GETTING RID OF US

8. "it will aide my explanation and give me achance to itemize all the individual apologies necesary" fucking nerd i love u so fucking much for that you have no idea i will kill for you.

9. I love mikey but "orange oaf" sound really fitting. At least coming for someone who doesn't entirely understand the weight of the insult sdgjh´guj.

10.All of the conversation about the bastard's three (i'm starting to have question about this name) is just so sdhgusdghhsfhdfhusg

11.YEAH FREE CONTEXT FOR OUR POOR READER

12. Donnie: "fucking botched bullshit rescue attemnt. He's utter scum. I'll"

Me: u///u

13. "Sort of.. kicked him off the roof?" "Oh and I called him carrot cake and told him to get lost"

"kiss me"

I HAVE- I CANT EXPLAIN-

YEAH I WILL LITERALLY TEAR APART EVERY PERSON YOU DON'T LIKE IF THAT MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY AND PROUD AND LOVED. I DON'T CARE IF THEY'RE "THE GOOD ONES" AND GOD I WILL COMMIT ALL THE WORST ATTROCITIES IF IT MEANS YOU WILL LOOK AT ME THAT WAY AGAIN URGGGHHHHHHHHH

14. NO PLEASE DONNIE DON'T LEAVE ME I LITERALLY NEED YOU FOR MY BRAIN TO GIVE ME THE HAPPY JUICE

15. BIG ASS APOLOGY WALL TEXT I'M GONNA TATTOO IT IN MY OTHER FVCKING TIGHT I SWEAR TO GOD

YEAH BITCH APOLOGIZE FOR EVERYTHING SO I CAN FORGIVE YOU WITHOUT A SECOND TOUGHT AND THEN HOLD YOU IN MY HANDS BECAUSE YOU DESERVE THE WORLD IDC YOU CAN KICK MY MOM AND ILL SAY "AWW NO BIGGIE BBY"

16. OF COURSE HE HAS LOTS PROPERTIES ALL LOOKING THE SAME YEAH READER HE IS INDEED A STUPID RICH IDIOT

IT'S SO SAD BUT SO FUNNY THAT HE CAN'T GET ATTACHED TO ONE PLACE SO HE HAS TO DO THAT HE CAN LEAVE IN MY HOUSE NOBODY WILL EVER FIND HIM IN MY SHIT ASS TOWN (jk i love my town)

17. Donnie being seduced by reader insulting his (not) brothers

18. "I had made it to 30" the exact moment I started to cry.

19. "I will never be more than a deplorable villain." YESYESYESYESYES IT'S HAPPENING

THE CONVERSATION- ITS HAPPENIGN

DONNIE EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE I WOULD LOVE U FOR THAT DONT EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT

20. "Your blind eye will get you killed and I will decimate this planet for even considering bringing harm to you" THIS EXACT MOMENT FREAKING DORK, THIS EXACT MOMENT MADE MY BRAIN STOP FUNCTIONING.

LITERALLY, THIS FANFIC IS A COCTEL OF ALL THE STUFF I LOVE AND THIS IS THE FUCKING CHERRY ON TOP. I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS SINGLE LINE. I WILL SCREENCAP THIS PART OF THE FIC AND IT GOES TO MY WALLPAPER.

21. the final scene is so touching. I really love those two and I know they'll be together again but part of me feels so bad for them for having to be apart for so much time ("at least a few weeks" it's a fvcking lot). I wonder how will reader process al this information when she's away from all of this. I wonder what will happen with dispute of donnie and his (not) brothers.

I WONDER IF THE BASTARD IS SPLINTER OR IT'S THE TURTLES. I GOT THE DOUBT AND LOOKING IT UP IN GOOGLE TRANSLATE ONLY CONFUSED ME MORE.

-

My asks are getting longer and longer BUT THERE WAS SO MUCH I NEEDED TO YELL ABOUT I SWEAR TO GOD

I've decided chapter 19 was my favorite yasterday but now you blessed us with this one. THIS IS MY TOTAL FAVORITE, I DON'T EVEN HAVE TO THINK TWICE, IF EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS CHAPTER WASN'T ENOUGH TO MAKE IT MY FAVORITE THAT LINE, YOU KNOW WICH, ABSOLUTELY BOUGHT ME.

i hope you have a good day bye!!!!!!!

You miserable? I'm the same way! It's excruciating to be in love with a purple turtle. He is both everything and some how nothing when he is so real in my dreams 😩😩😩😩

S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. is the best white noise machine. There, i said it.

Daddy issues, huh? 👀👀👀

Mr. Alliteration over here has a color insult for each brother. Oaf is a little lighthearted overall, but from Donnie it's straight hate.

Ahhhh!! I'm not commenting on every item, but you highlighting them makes my heart swell!!! I can't thank you enough! This really made me smile!! You have a wonderful day as well!!!

[prospectivehero]

VICTOR AND NORA, A GOTHAM LOVE STORY- Written by Lauren Myracle, Illustrated by Isaac Goodhart

Confession time: I'm terrible with names (real life and fictional). Even with my associate's degree in Batmanology, my poor name recognition missed the significance of Victor Fries, a resident of the city of Gotham. When the part of my brain that doesn't require caffeine to function decided to look up some familiar names when I was halfway through the novel, I was heartbroken. Would it have been better for me to be surprised by the ending, I wasn't sure, but I didn't think I could expect a happy ending from "a gotham love story."

This is a rough read. Much like Constantine and Miracle Man, it's not something to read when you're in a bad headspace. I'll talk more about it in the trigger warnings, but this story focuses on death and dying. Victor is burdened by a loved one's death in his past, which he feels at fault for. He has become cold to the people around him and feels safe studying cryogenics in solitude. Nora only sees death in her future due to an incurable progressive disease that will slowly deteriorate her functionality, personality, and treasured memories before it kills her. But she refuses to let this illness take anything valuable from her, so she has decided to plan her suicide and leave this world as herself. But she's given herself time to make more memories with a boy she met in a cemetery.

I was not in a good headspace reading this comic. I won't go into full detail, just know that I was having several identity crises overlapping one another. I'm in a better headspace now that I've figured some stuff out, but during that experience, these very well-developed characters hit especially hard. Nora's relationship to her illness and battle with its ever-increasing presence felt relatable since I battle a progressive disability. The two are not the same, but I understood her desire not to tell any of her friends so they wouldn't have to watch her suffer and degrade. When she tells Victor, I relate to his desperation to keep her with him since she makes him feel alive and loved.

If you recognized the names you probably could figure out where the story is going but it's worth the read. The story feels very personal. The illustrations, by Jason Goodhart, consistently match the feeling of Lauren Myracle's story and none of the beautiful character designs distract from the weight of everything that happens. There were breaks in the story that reference other artists or stories like Tim Burton or Titanic (1997) to serve the story. I think these breaks flowed well, but I could understand if it's not everyone's cup of Mountain Dew. This is my new second favorite graphic novel, despite how I reacted to it while reading it. I highly recommend picking it up.

TRIGGER WARNINGS (with potential spoilers) -

1) Death - Victor frequently remembers the fire that he accidentally started as a child that destroyed the family house and took the life of his older brother, Otto Freeze.

2) Planned and Attempted Suicide - Nora reasons that this is the only way she can die as herself, so she sets a date and a means and writes a letter to her father. She is stopped before she can complete her plan. Her note is read at the end of the novel.

3) Secondary Mourning - This comic gives time and space to mourn with the characters as they mourn their past and future. We see how Nora views her illness and how Victor views himself. It was a unique experience, being given an opening to grieve in moments that may feel very familiar to many of us, but it can be painful if you're not ready to feel those feelings.

4) Sex (Consentual) - It is as PG-13 and fade-to-black as a sex scene could possibly get, but it doesn't hide the fact that it happened.

5) Language - Much like Constantine, I tuned it out, which means I had to skim through the novel. I saw rare uses of language to the tune of "s***".

[changeling-of-the-fae]

Post-Op Day 4

Today has been exceedingly educational. Aka, when everyone says "don't stop taking your meds" you should probably listen:

You might need them for longer than you think.

I tried to taper off the percocet - I did fine with 12 hours between doses, so buoyed by my previous success and relative lack of pain, I tried to hold out for 24 hours.

That turns out to have been a mistake.

I have writer brain, so I'm filing this all away for future reference. But I understand now that people react very differently to pain. I think I always sort of knew that, just like I know sometimes I feel sick because I have a bad headache, and not because my stomach is upset.

I saw a lot of posts about people crying, or screaming, when they didn't keep up with their post-op meds (or waited until the nerve block wore off to take them.)

I didn't see anything about throwing up, so I'm going to add my experience to the hat which is to say:

Pain makes me nauseous. I felt sick to my stomach before I even realized I was in pain. When I did, it was that burning again - only worse. I've never been tazed, but I'm imagining it feels something like this, on your whole leg.

Imagine someone replacing your leg with a hot fire poker.

The good news is, percocet kicks in pretty quick. So after white knuckling it for about 30 minutes, hoping it would just pass, I gave up and went for the meds.

I will say, my diversion tactics seem to work to a certain extent - pain is noise and if I give my brain enough other noise to focus on, it seems to help.

Some of it is literal noise - apologies to my eardrums, but it's for a worthy cause. And the rest is sensory - I refilled my water bottle with cold water and put it against the side of my face. I'm not saying I could have functioned in that state, but it was slightly more bearable (and I managed not to puke while waiting for the meds to do their thing.)

Tomorrow we're going to stick to the 12 hour schedule, but on half doses. Just to be on the safe side.

I took my notes and that's not an experience I care to relive.

On a bright note, I finally started Horizon: Forbidden West today. I set it to Ultra Hard to make it last as long as possible - so far so good, since I haven't managed to beat the tutorial boss.

It'a good to have goals.

And skills - I've gotten really good at using my non-op leg to move my bad leg around. I had a lot of practice since I injured it mountainside, then had three days before leaving, then on and off the plane and back to the airport again, and all the time after when my quads weren't firing.

Nurse Hottie was shocked post-op by how well I could maneuver without help. I didn't consider it much, but now I'm remembering a friend explaining how she had to hold her son's leg when he went to the bathroom or showered, and how it was awful for both of them because sometimes she would drop it on accident.

Which is a lot of words to say that no one can be as careful with your knee as you are, and I've been really lucky because I've been managing without a designated Leg Lifter.

Which is probably why I was so startled today when I finally dropped my leg for the first time. I've been elevating on an wheeled ottoman, with stuff behind it so I can't accidentally slide it away. The problem is that then it's in the way when I want to get up, and I can only push it so far, so I need someone to slide it the rest of the way.

Well. They did that thing, but boy was I ever not ready. I'm not sure who was more surprised when my leg came crashing down. It hurt (surprise surprise), but I'm pretty sure it's going to take more than a little unexpected gravity to undo my surgeon's fine handy work.

My lesson here is to put up warning signs, by which I mean micromanage and advocate loudly for your needs to whoever is helping you.

It's one thing to hurt yourself, and another for someone who has no idea what hurts where to accidentally do it.

[wirewitchviolet]

It kind of hurts to think about just how stupid nazis are, and they need to be picked on about it more often.

It's late, I'm procrastinating about going to bed, and some nazi just wandered into a Discord server I'm in and started rambling in the most breathtakingly brainless way. He's not having any sort of conversation with anyone or saying anything relevant to the purpose of the channel, just... random stupid gibberish, mostly nazi coded, but mixed in with other stuff that's just... stupid. He's rambling about people clutching pearls over "the sexism and AI" in some banner ad that's just like, one of those generic corporate art deals with a bunch of random people smiling, and then he starts rambling about spiders and viruses that "shut computers down from epilepsy" and you can just see everyone else in the server having this mental debate over whether to just start shouting "what the hell are you even talking about you deluded weirdo? Do you even know what any of these words you're using mean?" or try to be more polite and diplomatic, or just pretend this loser isn't there.

Personally I'm biting my tongue because I have this strong urge to just kinda pin this creep to the wall and start interrogating him about why he's wasting his time watching youtube videos from other braindead losers and trying to parrot the incoherent garbage that comes out of their mouths, and how he expected people were going to react to this drivel, but I know this particular crowd wouldn't appreciate such an active effort to try and restart this piece of garbage's critical thinking skills.

For real though, it's one thing to internalize all the really really stupid propaganda and invent strawmen to try to argue with and all that, but even without the incoherent mutterings about feminism, this guy's making a first impression on a crowd of strangers that his brain doesn't function, he's not going to shut up, and he's just going to keep throwing out incomprehensible word salad until people stop paying attention or kick him out. How is that your gameplan in life? What sort of setting is that going to work in as a means of integrating with some sort of community?

This isn't the only recent example I've seen of this either. Someone was just telling me the other day how the whole nazi culture war sphere wasted like a week or two moaning and rending their garments because they got the idea in their head that in TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (which is really great, and you should see it), they "made Splinter gay." And like... they didn't. They didn't do anything that would ever give anyone that sort of impression. They actually made him rather emphatically heterosexual, and there's this whole bit about him wishing he could find a date. But... some braindead nazi got this idea in his head, somehow, and ranted about it because it was the best dumb culture war thing he could think of to ramble about, and then all the rest started parroting this idiot and shouting about how much they hate this movie that clearly not a one of them has actually watched, or read a review of, or seen a trailer for, or read a vague wikipedia summary on. They're just all making complete clowns of themselves for like a straight month. It's really just beyond pathetic seeing this stuff.

And like... I dunno. Obviously some of these people are so far gone there's nothing to be done for it but justified self-defense measures, but when these idiot children are first dipping a toe in the water, someone really needs to just pull them aside and ask them why the hell they think it's a good idea to take advise from the dumbest most reviled losers on the planet and start acting in a way that's obviously going to leave them completely and utterly shunned and ridiculed by basically every single person on the planet, you know?

[kingthunder]

Ever since I was a little kid inhaling books off the sf/f shelves at the local library ten at a time, I wanted to be an author.

I put that desire on hold for decades. Not because I didn't want to do it, but because I was one of those gifted-track ADHD kids who internalized the whole idea of, "if at first you don't succeed, the lesson is never try—then they won't know you're skating through everything by the skin of your teeth and are actually incompetent." It took me until I was in my 30s to undo that mentality. It seems like real kindergarten stuff to realize that if you want to get better at something you have to practice. All I can say in my defense is that my own father used to tell me repeatedly, and very smugly, that only losers who aren't good at stuff have to practice, and that we (him and me) were winners who didn't have to do things like that.

(I also think that he has ADHD, and that he cultivated that own mentality in himself to make himself feel better about also lacking executive function, but if I told him that he would dismiss the thought before I was even done getting it out of my mouth. alas.)

Sometime between my middle school dreams and the crushing weight of the undiagnosed health problems of my 20s, I stopped reading. Books, anyway. I would read fanfiction in spurts. A few months here, a few months there, just when a particular fandom was calling to me. So when I finally got over my own infuriating blend of superiority/inferiority and decided to start practicing writing, it was with fanfiction. It made sense to me. I liked reading it. It gave me the benefit of having pre-made characters and settings, so I didn't have to learn how to create those things and learn the mechanics of storytelling at the same time. Plus, I'd have a readership already. Wins all around.

It went well! I look back at the stuff I wrote when I was first starting, and compare it to now, and the progress is clear (to me, at any rate). I still want to get better, of course, I don't think I'll ever want to stop getting better, but it turns out that practicing works.

My problem now is that...I don't how to move back to published fiction. I just really love writing fanfiction, and I really love reading it, and trying to pivot away from that and into the realm of published stuff sucks, actually. I'm constantly checking books out of the library, reading one, ten, fifty pages, and setting them aside out of boredom or anger. It's almost impossible to find anything that holds my interest enough to finish. It's like the genre of book I want to read only exists as fanfiction.

Meanwhile, I'm bashing my head against a wall trying to make myself start writing original fiction that I could possibly publish. I've managed a little of it. I've taken classes. Applied for some workshops I didn't get into. Won one flash contest and got the dinky little 300 word story published in an anthology. But every word is like pulling teeth. It's agony.

And I'm asking myself why, about all of it. I don't like reading books; what made me think I'd like writing them? Like obviously I'm not having a good time writing them. I'm frustrated to the point of tears constantly when I realize I've gone yet another week with nothing more than brainstorming stories I didn't write a single word of. But I don't want to give up either, because giving up on this means giving up on the one goal I've ever set for myself in my entire life, and it feels too much like giving in to the "you're actually incompetent" brain demon.

Persisting feels like pain, but giving up feels like numbness, and I'd rather hurt.

There's no point to this blog post. This isn't a feel-good essay with a breakthrough or lesson at the end. I have no neat narrative ends to tie up. I'm just screaming into the outer void, because screaming into the inner void hasn't been doing me a crumb of good. Thanks for listening. I'm going to go back to staring at en empty word doc and feeling guilty for not typing anything into it.

[glassautomaton]

Could you share headcanons or niche facts about Omega-7 / Iris, Adrian, and Beatrice? I really adore them and am interested to see how you interpret them. :]

Hoo boy, Adrian and Beatrice. Those are characters I’ve given a fair bit of thought to, both since they’re important to Iris’ backstory and other reasons I’m sure you’re privy to from ready my sandbox. Fun fact, I originally thought Adams was Beatrice’s brain in Sophia/Olympia Zero’s body, but it turns out I just misread some foreshadowing for other stuff in the original Resurrection run. That’s not really relevant, but how crazy would that be, right?

Unfortunately I don’t have much in the way of specific headcanons to give you at the moment, not like I could with Iris and the lot. I did have some stuff I wanted to put here, but some of it is going to end up in my next tale, so I’ll say to look forwards to that.

I don’t have quite as many headcanons as these characters aren’t really ones I’ve built up in my head so much like original characters, rather than characters I sort of inherited. Then again, not too much with them was actually written - or at least survived the Great Wiki Purge - so a good amount of the characterization is open. I’ve put a short write up for them as well as some headcanons under the cut.

Adrian was put on Able’s team as a psychologist, though this was mostly lip service at the time, as I figure (and it has been made clear in Resurrection) that if anyone was listening to psychological assessments of Able, he never would have been fielded. Able analyzed him, in his own way, as much and he analyzed Able, and over the course of Omega-7, he gradually wore down into a different person, though more on that later.

As for a niche fact, I think this was already shown in Voices Carry, but Iris’ revolver used to be Adrian’s. Having been less deft when it came to socializing with teenagers than Beatrice, he still wanted to bond with Iris a little, and taught her about shooting. Though Adrian was mild-mannered, he was a good shot and even participated in some shooting competitions with the task force. The significance of the gun changed as Adrian began to stress Iris’ role to her as time went on, as we see in Voices Carry.

She could be crass and boisterous, while Adrian generally kept to himself and was more bookish, though the events of Omega-7 affected both of them differently. Beatrice grew attached to Iris, and as time went on and more and more members of the task force were killed, parties stopped becoming an opportunity for revelry and started to function more as a way of her to take stock of who was left standing. She was scared for Iris, but ultimately wasn’t sure what she could do to help her. Adrian, on the other hand, came to see combat as his constant, and everything else was his downtime. Every day, living to fight, and for what? What was he fighting for? At a certain point, he didn’t really know, but he knew it didn’t matter. He didn’t have a say in the matter.

Iris I’ve already spoken about, but Adrian taught her how to fan-fire his gun like a cowboy and how to do all that Revolver Ocelot shit. She occasionally shows it off because she likes getting complements but doesn’t want to seem like she likes getting compliments.

[threadsun]

Freaking. HELL MAN!!! Okay. OKAY! Literally got me acting like a fool pacing the around the entire house because I literally CAN’T EVEN! Neighbors probably think I’m lookin crazy with all these wild gestures, freaking messing up food sounding like Hein the old wheezy dog from Howl’s Moving Castle, had me shout out a curse in disbelief, literally was just about to walk into the microwave door. Alright, I had to stop writing for a moment because I wound up having a seasoning packet explode on me because I was not functioning right. Why am I telling you that? You can’t tell when I start or stop writing but I DON’T KNOW! In any case, note to self: do not try to do things before reading your messages. AND I STILL HAVEN’T GONE PAST THE BLUE TEXT! Listen, I’m a very animated person because of how much I’ve performed in musical theatre so like, freaking looked like I was doing a whole cabaret show up in here. That went WAY harder than I expected it to be and apparently there are some things I didn’t know I wanted until you said it. So um, yeah, thanks for that! 🥵 Okay so MAYBE I did underestimate you JUST a tiny bit and didn’t think you could get me to react more than before, but each time you’ve been proving me wrong and this one just takes the cake! LISTEN, I’M TRYING to be strong and tough here, but pulling out stunts like that MAKE IT SO HARD 😂 But I’m not giving in yet! NOPE! NOT HAPPENING! NO SIR! I am STRONG! I am CAPABLE of not submitting. Tbh, I don’t even know how to respond back to what you said because every time I look at it, I let out a flustered laugh and my eyes shift away instinctively (*coughandwhatyousaidisalltruesoCOUGHCOUGHCOUGH*) So nope! Totally don’t want to be or go through ALL of those things! No way! 👀

NOICE! Glad to hear I’ve got a chance! 😊 But I’ve gotta respect your professionalism though, it definitely builds self confidence in yourself and your products/services! I used to have the issue of selling myself short and giving away services like readings for free because I didn’t think it was worth anything, plus I wanted to help others. Because I did that though, I ran myself ragged and wound up having to stop. By putting limits like a price or a time limit, it shows that what you have is valuable and takes up your own personal time to do to provide them goods. People wind up respecting you more and you can still take care of yourself. Even though I feel like I didn’t learn much in college, it’s in moments like these that I just go “Okay, maybe I DID learn alittle bit.” Lol!

But yeah, DEFINITELY too bold for Ian. He’s the perfect example of needing to learn to love yourself first before you love another. If he only found himself more deserving of love and took the brave step of cutting ties with toxic people in his life like his mom, maybe he would’ve found more confidence in the type of relationship that he and M/C shared. I’m sure that his route will be all about healing his traumas and self-worth. I’m about to buy all these guys blanket warmers and just bundle them up while watching Disney movies.

AW HELL YESSSSS! Freaking LIVE for stuff like that man! Just having your brain go blank every time he uses a trigger phrase and a dopey smile lands on your face. My brain keeps going ultra subby mode thinking about all the ways this could go. BRRRRRR. Phantom of the Opera creates hypnosis kinks? No wayyyy! Mirror scene where Christine gets hypnotized and her makeup turns all sultry the whole next scene with a dreamy expression? Gerald Butler? PSSH! No one finds THAT incredibly hot, no! 👀 And then SDJ is loosely BASED off of said Broadway show/book/movie? Ain’t no way someone’s who’s dream was to play Christine Daae since Nursery school and would involve her entire life on getting that role would EVER love a game like this! Oh, and Jack’s supposed to be the Phantom? The sexiest guy in the movie but also the most freaking deranged? BOI. POTO was my yandere gateway, I swear 😂

Anyways! Fireman AU! But yeah, it’s so weird how one moment sunshine is just talking normally, but the next they’re drooling all over themselves and- wait did they just moan out Jack’s name? They’re begging to be pounded into oblivion? Well, the firehouse can’t let down their favorite pet, can they? So they’ll be more than happy to oblige! “Sunshine, if you keep drooling like that, you’re going to make everyone believe you can’t live another day without my love filling you up~! Don’t you know how dangerous that is sunspot? You don’t even know how much I’d love to make you mine in front of everyone, but that’s okay! Puppies like you are GREAT learners, so I’m sure you’ll figure it out in no time!” M/C is just a blushing, incoherent puddle at that point between the triggers and the copious amounts of touching. NOM NOM NOM, I could eat hypnokink ALL DAY EVERY DAY!!! OOO! I can’t even imagine the types of punishments they’d receive!

YA GOT THIS!!! But I’ll get my tombstone ready. RIP me when it does come out 😂 YUS! Like Jasmine or white orchid or something for Ian. I honestly don’t think that Alan would have any type of super woodsy smell on him, he’d be just straight CAMPFIRE with some kind of grass mixed in. Literally just laid down on the ground and that’s his scent 😂

OO OO OO! Sounding like a monkey over here lol, but that sounds like FUN! I’m curious at how far I’d be able to go since I love the heat normally (ice cubes feel SOOOO freaking good)! But that massage oil sounds aMAZING too! GOD, I love kinks! There’s so much fun things you can do and just that rush of dopamine. UGH! Love it! There’s a sex shop downtown where I’m at that has a floor dedicated to kinky items and I felt like a kid at a candy store lol. Sadly, I’ve never got to do much since my last relationship was long distance for years until we moved in together for a bit and had no privacy so we didn’t get to do much. Plus my drive is fiendishly high while his was a lot lower so we didn’t match up well in that aspect, but it’s okay! But I remember talking a lot about what I would get the moment I had the chance! (*coughgotropesbutnevergottousethemcough*) In any case, you got me curious, what’s the sensations with electricity? I know for me, I’m scared of being shocked by static electricity during the winter so I’ve never considered it, but I’m sucker for trying new things soooo 😗

Oh thank goodness!!! I got scared for a moment there! Anxiety and people pleasing tendencies got my heart racing like a mad man lol! I gotcha though and I’m glad you’re having as much fun as I am~😉 Also tell Moon that I’m eating up that whole discussion over on their blog! I normally pop on over because I love their writing too, but I saw how they’re discussing how certain parts of the fandom were acting ridiculous between the audio and Nick’s design and I was just like “YES! GO OFF!” 👏 😂 D’Awwww! \(//∇//)\ I got da SMOOCHES! Thank you Sun for trusting me to speak up and reassuring me that it’s all good 🩵 But noooooo, I’m not too neeeeeedy~! I’m a STRONG woman and I ain’t kneeling down to any dom! 😜

-🎃

It's cute, how easily flustered you get from just a few words~ And to think, you thought you knew what you were getting into? But as I said, you just need to meet a proper dom who knows you better than you know yourself. Who'll open your eyes to all those filthy little kinks you've been pretending not to notice. Someone who can tell that you want to be a helpless princess reduced to nothing more than a desperate whore, so eager for the approval of her dom that she'll accept any punishment and thank them for it.

Exactly, Ian needs to learn to love himself and also learn to trust mc to tell him how they feel. He's just got a whole boatload of trauma to work through and unlearn, and I hope his route is us getting to help him with that, because he deserves it!!

God yeah Phantom is sooooooo good for hypnokink~ Everything about Music of the Night is just 😘👌 perfect! Jack would definitely be the one to hypnotise you into becoming the perfect pet for the whole fire station crew. He'd scramble your brain so much, you'd truly believe you were a dog with no purpose other than to please them. He'd have you getting desperate and horny the moment you heard his voice. Hypnokink Jack is divine!!

Oooh Jasmine is a nice one for Ian!! Alan definitely smells like he took a nap in the grass next to a campfire. Man's just smoky and grassy and definitely hasn't showered in weeks.

Kinks are so fun!!! My first few introductions to kink were... not ideal. But when I got back into it at 18, it was with friends that I trusted and properly organised community events and stuff which was much better!! And now I've been in it for years and have dedicated my career to it :3c I feel very lucky that I get to do that tbh, it's not the most lucrative thing but it's fun and fulfilling!!

As for electricity, hmmmm... depends on what you're using and the voltage. A tens unit, for example, is kinda just tingly and buzzy because the pads are directly on your skin. Though if you turn it up enough, it'll also make your muscles tense/twitchy which can be fun if you're safe about it. A violet wand, on the other hand, doesn't actually touch the skin and instead creates sparks between the wand and your skin. So that feels a little more like a sharp, stinging pain. Almost like the world's tiniest, thinnest whip. It can also leave a tingly feeling afterwards if it's a higher voltage. But yeah, really depends on the type of electricity. A shock collar sometimes makes your blood feel like it's fizzing/bubbly and it's definitely a much harder (and less safe) form of estim. But violet wands, which is what most people think of when they think of electricity play, are mostly just delightfully sharp pain~

Don't worry, I'm very direct! I don't vaguepost, and if I did then I'd be like "this IS a vaguepost" in the tags lmao I'm not good at subtlety. Rest assured, though, I'm having plenty of fun~ And Moon said they're glad people have been taking it well!! We both feel strongly about the way people have been treating Sauce and the team, so it's good to know it really is just a vocal minority who are entitled bullies. Of course smooches!! Smooches for a strong, capable woman who just so happens to want to be forced onto her knees and used~